KOTA KINABALU: The Warisan Plus Chief, Shafie Apdal has been touring the State blaming the BN Government for the lack of basic infrastructure, utilities and public amenities in the rural areas. A closer scrutiny will reveal that he has no one to blame but himself and Sabahans should hold him to account for his failure.
Speaking at a ceremony in Papar recently, Shafie said the State was too dependent on the federal government causing the state to have 570 poor schools with the rest unsafe to use. He added that the school infrastructure in rural areas is also incomplete and this proves that Sabah was neglected by the previous federal government.
The people ought to know that Shafie became the Member of Parliament for UMNO, for the Semporna seat in 1995. He then held several positions, including Deputy Minister of Defense from 1999 to 2004. After the 2004 election, he was appointed Minister of Home Affairs, Trade and Consumer Affairs, and later in the Ministry of Unity, Culture, Arts and Heritage.
In 2009-2015, he became the Minister of Rural and Regional Development in Najib Razak’s Cabinet. He also held the post of UMNO vice-president. This means, Shafie himself has been involved in the Federal Government for not less than 25 years, and the last six years have been directly responsible for rural and regional development.
During his term as Minister of Rural and Regional Developement from 2009 up to 2015, the total budget for rural development allocations from 2009 to 2015 was a staggering RM 34.6 billion.
If as the Federal Minister for rural and regional development he had applied the equal partnership status which he is now harping on in his desperate campaign rounds to garner support, he should have allocated one third of the amount, or RM 11.5 billion to Sabah.
If he had done that, most if not all of the rural infrastructure, utilities and public amenities, such as rural road, electricity, water, school, community centres would have been resolved by now.
Instead of allocating the required funds to Sabah, only the bare minimum was spent on Sabah. Instead of resolving Sabah’s rural infrastructure, his tenure was rocked with allegations of scandals and investigations on corruption and abuse of power, white elephant non-operating water treatment facilities in Semporna and Pulau Gaya, missing billions of ringgit and ownerships of properties in London and Kuala Lumpur worth tens of millions.
He must be held responsible for his failure to develop the rural area of Sabah and Sarawak. What did he do when he was the Minister of Rural and Regional Development!
Najib himself has revealed that Shafie has asked too many limited tenders, no less than 15 tenders, in fact.
Wouldn’t it be better during his long period, not less than 25 years of involvement in the Federal Government, he used that time to not only provide the necessary rural infrastructure in schools, especially in the Interior of Sabah, but more generally assist in resolving the rural infrastructure deficiency throughout the state.
The poor rural infrastructure had been regarded as one of the main causes of poverty. This is one of the main reason for Sabah now renowned in Malaysia as the State with the highest incidence of poverty.
Shafie is only good at blaming the previous state government under the leadership of Tan Sri Musa Haji Aman to cover up his and the Warisan-led government’s weaknesses in governing Sabah. His poor performance started in 2018 and in 2019, Sabah had the lowest GDP growth rate of 0.5% compared to the nation’s highest rate of 8.2% in 2017 before he took over as Chief Minister. Instead of owning up to his failure and non-performance, he lied blatantly by blaming on the global Covid-19 pandemic which only happened from March 2020 and there were no Covid-19 in 2018 and 2019.
It is rather unfortunate that there are people including leaders and people who have held positions of power fall for his political rhetorics and brand of politics. Now, he his trying to hoodwink Sabahans into supporting his Warisan Plus coalition to continue as the government for the next 5 years.
Can Sabahans trust him and his Warisan Plus coalition with leaders being charged for corruption and other offences and entrust the Sabah government to him and be subject to further damage and misery? –
Datuk Dr. Jeffrey Kitingan, STAR President
